


I Try To Talk Refined

by holly_violet



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale Loves Crowley's hair, Crowley Has Long Hair (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), First Kiss, Fluff, Inspired by a Hozier Song, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Mild Angst, My 50th AO3 Post, My First Work in This Fandom, Oblivious Aziraphale (Good Omens), Other, Pining Crowley (Good Omens), i love that that's a tag, stories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-07-20 05:42:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19987051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holly_violet/pseuds/holly_violet
Summary: Aziraphale talks. Crowley drifts.(or, the obligatory late-night getting-together fic)





	I Try To Talk Refined

**Author's Note:**

> Watched Good Omens, couldn't stop thinking about it, watched it again with my family, read the book, cried to Hozier, wrote this. Bon appetit.
> 
> (title is from Hozier's Talk, which is such a Crowley song and also a transcendental experience)

_ so i try to talk refined/for fear that you'll find out/how i'm imagining you _

It’s been a couple of hours since they returned to the bookshop after dinner at the Ritz, and Aziraphale has scarcely stopped talking.

Crowley doesn’t mind, he never has. Aziraphale always has plenty to say, boundless stories to tell and retell, and Crowley is happy to listen, to put in a word where he can, to sit back in that ridiculous armchair and soak in the comfortable warmth.

Both physical and metaphorical warmth, as he was present for the events of some of Aziraphale’s stories, but hearing them retold from his perspective made them seem golden and dreamlike, almost happier, as if Aziraphale had been seeing them — and therefore  _ him _ — through rose-tinted lenses. It’s nice to let himself think that Aziraphale has appreciated his presence during so many shenanigans over their 6,000 years of friendship.

He knows so many of Aziraphale’s stories so well that he could probably recite them word-for-word in his sleep. Often, he simply lets his mind wander, throwing his limbs at all angles across a couch, shifting and tossing until he finds a comfortable way to arrange himself, and then just thinks.

This is rarely a good idea. 

While Crowley is on the creative side, for a demon, his daydreams are rarely the kind which inspire incredible multi-platform media franchises, or even rather bad ones. They tend to go one of two ways.

The first is rather the better of the two. Although, ‘better’ may not be the right word. Rather, less dangerous. About a quarter of the time that Crowley’s half-listening to Aziraphale, he’s thinking about the way everything could go badly wrong from here on out. It seems that his mind’s default setting is his Fall, and how the after-effects are still rolling over him to this day, and they may never stop, and  _ oh God-Satan-whoever is he always going to reek of fire and brimstone, _ and—

At that point he tends to start hyperventilating a little, which garners a pause and a ‘my dear boy, are you alright?’ from Aziraphale, to which he responds with a noncommittal noise and a keep-talking gesture, and he tries his best to listen for the rest of the evening.

The second option is significantly worse. Not because it’s so awful, it just hurts rather a lot more. 

Thoughts of Aziraphale take up about the other three-quarters of his brain idling, and Hell would probably be quite disappointed if they knew how frankly  _ wholesome _ they were. Crowley would be perfectly content to sit with Aziraphale in bed and play on his phone while he reads, or go for a lunch date, or hold hands, or something. More than perfectly content. He’d probably spontaneously combust.

Not that his thoughts don’t wander—  _ elsewhere _ , where Aziraphale is concerned, but it’s rather uncomfortable to think about how someone would look in the heat of passion while said someone is sitting five feet away and enthusing about oysters.

Then, Aziraphale asks him a question, or gets up to refill their glasses of wine, and Crowley is jolted from a pleasant daydream which had been vaguely about buying Aziraphale flowers and then trying to cook dinner together, which causes a sensation not unlike having cold water thrown over your head and trickling down your spine. 

He blinks a couple of times, trying to clear his head, as Aziraphale sits back down, a bit closer this time. Crowley lifts his head and sits up a bit, moving conspicuously to lay more comfortably on the couch, and Aziraphale finds himself with Crowley’s head cushioned on one of his thighs and a lap full of coppery hair, grown out just a little longer than his usual style.

It’s bolder than Crowley usually is, which probably makes a point about how slowly he desperately tries to move with Aziraphale. 

The angel seems unperturbed, sitting back against the sofa and pulling a creamy-white throw across Crowley’s angular frame. To Crowley’s ultimate wine-drunk delight, he starts running gentle fingers through his hair, and sipping on his glass of wine with the other hand.

“Thass’ nice, angel,” Crowley half-slurs, his cheek, pressed against Aziraphale, muffling his words.

“You do have such  _ lovely  _ hair, my dear. Like silk. I’ve often found myself wanting to run my hands through it.”

“That’s ‘cause I take care of it.”

“Perhaps I should start doing the same,” Aziraphale says, probably just to himself, almost like the thought has never even occurred to him. Crowley doubts that this is true; Aziraphale has always been the hedonist of the two of them, with his sinfully comfortable bed and high-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets, his fancy sushi places and his expensive bottles of wine. It’s nice to think that playing with Crowley’s hair is one of those tactile, pleasing things.

Crowley slowly relaxes, letting the comfortable warmth of Aziraphale’s words settle over him.  _ ‘I’ve often found myself wanting to run my hands through it,’  _ he had said of Crowley’s hair.  _ Why didn’t you, Aziraphale? I would never have minded. Is there anything else you’ve ever wanted to do, but just never felt you could ask of me? I need to know. _

They are pressed closer than they have ever been before, but it doesn’t feel as much like uncharted territory as Crowley imagined it might. He had half-thought it might burn him, burn Aziraphale, that skin-on-skin contact even in its most passing form might end in some kind of holy intervention or immediate smiting of both of them simply for being close with each other, for finding some kind of companionship in the only other being who has been a consistently familiar face for six thousand otherwise-lonely years on Earth.

Course, these fears aren’t entirely irrational. Even now, after fooling Heaven and Hell, after the Not-pocalypse and Adam Young and everything else, there’s still that gnawing sense of  _ this isn’t going to last, surely they won’t let us have a little happiness for very much longer.  _

Crowley lets himself have this moment, this breath of peace in the middle of his ever-moving world. Jarringly, he wishes that the nice girl with the book (what was her name, again? It started with A _ ,  _ and it reminded him of times long past) hadn’t burnt the second  _ Nice and Accurate Prophecies  _ book, because he needs to know how long they have, whether he needs to savour this.

Aziraphale’s hand falters, and then stops, coming to rest far too gently on Crowley’s shoulder, and he sets down his glass of wine. Crowley turns his head just a little, raising an eyebrow.

“Why’d you stop?” Crowley says, and it’s almost petulant. He looks up, and Aziraphale’s mouth is twisted and pursed, like he’s thinking very hard about something Crowley won’t even try to comprehend.

“It’s just that I’ve been thinking. About— about  _ us,  _ and how we’ve meant so much to one another for so long and yet we’ve never— never even done this.” Crowley stops breathing. “I’ve hardly ever even touched you, we’ve never done  _ anything _ — anything which pairs of humans do when they care about each other in the way that we do.”

“What do you mean,  _ in the way that we do? _ ” Crowley will hardly let himself entertain the aching breath of the thought, that what he’s been hoping for, dreaming of, might finally have manifested itself in this post-Apocalypse world.

“I don’t know.” Crowley sits up, cross-legged, his knee just barely brushing Aziraphale’s. “I was hoping you would fill in that part.”

Crowley doesn’t want to say anything. He could, quite easily, let the weary dam break, let the quiet thoughts he’s been having for six thousand years come to a crescendo.  _ Well, I love you,  _ he might say,  _ and I’ve been holding on like a raft to the hope that you might love me, too, in some way more than what’s expected of an angel. And, I want to kiss you ‘til I lose my breath. You? _

“Don’t make me call the shots, angel.”

“No, I need you to.” Aziraphale’s voice is soft.  _ He knows. He knows what I’m going to say, he knows. _

“What happened to ‘ _ you go too fast for me’ _ ?” Crowley says, putting on a terrible, posh imitation of Aziraphale’s accent. “I don’t want to— to tell you something you don’t want to hear.”

“It wasn’t that I didn’t want to hear it. It’s not like I had a choice, my dear, I’ve been— oh, what’s that modern phrase—  _ been picking up what you’ve been putting down  _ since World War II, in that church, with the books. I just wasn’t ready to know, wasn’t ready to face it all, but I am now.” Aziraphale takes a breath, steels himself. “So, tell me.”

Aziraphale takes Crowley’s long-fingered hands in his warm ones, and  _ finally,  _ Crowley tells him  _ everything. _

It’s like he expected, words spilling from him like a flood, and maybe it’s an ethereal thing or an occult thing, but as he speaks of the Walls of Eden and Golgotha and the Globe Theater and sitting in the Bentley with a flask of holy water between his thighs, Crowley closes his uncovered eyes and lets golden light flash behind them.

He also closes them because he can’t bear to look at Aziraphale’s face, until he trails off, feeling a little emptier than before.  _ That’s all of it,  _ he thinks,  _ I have absolutely no stories left to tell. How have you always had more of them? _

“Oh.” Aziraphale chokes out, placing his hand on Crowley’s forearm and pulling him just a little closer. “I didn’t know that it had been so  _ long.” _

“Thought you could feel love in the air.” Oh, and he’s said it, that, the most important of all the four-letter words.

“I suppose it must have become something like background noise,” Aziraphale says absently. He can see it dawn on his face. “Ah.  _ Love. _ ”

“Yeah. Uh.” He’s pulled closer, again, so he can feel Aziraphale’s steady breaths on his skin, pressing a shaking hand to his chest, letting that oh-so-human heart beat against the pulse of his wrist.

“You must know that I love you, too.”

“You love everything. You’re an angel.”

“My darling, if I loved everything the way I love you, I don’t think I’d be able to handle it all.” Aziraphale says, his tone so reverent that he feels like it should be idolatry, that they should both be struck down.

“Uh. Well, then. I. Uh.” Crowley can’t form a full sentence (or even half of one) when they’re pressed this close, for the second time tonight. “Say that again, will you?”  _ I need to hear it. _

“Gladly. Forever. I love you.”

“Again.” Crowley insists, and Aziraphale laughs, a bright and joyful sound. Crowley lets himself listen.

“I lo—” and Crowley cuts him off with a press of lips, chaste and hardly even there, and Aziraphale makes a tiny sound of surprise. He pulls away, and Crowley just looks at him for a second as a smile breaks across his face, as miraculous to watch as the clouds parting after that very first rain.

Aziraphale leans back in, and finally,  _ finally  _ they’re kissing properly, lips moving together as they sink until they’re lying down, pressed into the couch, Crowley’s long legs and jutting elbows curling around Aziraphale, his fingers tangling themselves in his hair as a desperate, gasping noise is ripped from his throat.

“I  _ love you, _ ” Crowley whispers against Aziraphale’s Adam’s apple, murmurs into the hinge of his jaw, hisses over and over again as he feels every masterfully-placed kiss like a shockwave, and wonders why his hair isn’t standing on end with static electricity.

His nerves are alight, Aziraphale’s gentle hands placed almost modestly on his shirt-covered waist, black blazer cast aside hours ago, but the well-manicured nails he can feel digging into the fabric are just enough to show that this is affecting Aziraphale as much as it is affecting him. 

Six thousand years have passed by, with Aziraphale telling boundless stories and Crowley happily listening. Six months have passed with no heavenly or hellish commitments, and there are six hours until Aziraphale technically has to open the bookshop. 

Crowley doesn’t intend to let either of them do much talking.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! This was delightful to write.
> 
> My tumblr (which is pretty much a Good Omens fanblog at this point) is [galaxy-houseplants](https://galaxy-houseplants.tumblr.com)
> 
> also i know this story has been done before but I wanted to get in on the Ineffable Husbands action and this was what came to mind SUE ME
> 
> this was my 50th AO3 post! oh man, how far I've come since that first badly-titled klance fanfic
> 
> kudos, comments and any other feedback are always appreciated & fuel my creativity xx


End file.
